Is the Kalam Sound? Graham Oppy vs. Andrew Loke

well is the kalam cosmological argument a sound argument that is the topic for tonight's discussion between two philosophical titans dr graham opie and dr andrew loke the kalam cosmological argument is a first cause argument for the existence of god there's many different versions of it and tonight we're going to hear dr lokes and he recently wrote a book entitled god and ultimate origins as you can see here i'll go ahead and put it full screen here god and ultimate origins i'm actually trying to get around the screen so i can get the the subtitle a novel cosmological argument in it he argues that a first cause exists and that this first cause has a divine nature so just a little bit about my two guests dr loke his associate professor in the department of religion and philosophy at hong kong baptist university in addition to god and ultimate origins he's also authored the origins of divine christology a cryptic model of the incarnation and investigating the resurrection of jesus christ and he he's actually also uh currently writing a book on the teleological argument do i have that right andrew yes that's right great yeah and so in addition he's published articles and leading international peer-reviewed journals such as religious studies from cambridge university press and journal of theological studies oxford university press a little about dr graham oppy he's been on the show a number of times he's an is he he's an old friend at this point of capturing christianity his most recent appearance was with dr william lane craig on the applicability of mathematics for god's existence that was a really fascinating discussion very very high level discussion graham is a current professor of philosophy at monash university apart from his book on ontological arguments he's also written a book on arguments about the existence of god a book on infinity a book on the divine attributes a book on the best argument against the existence of god a short introduction to philosophy religion a book of naturalism and religion a book on atheism a book on atheism and agnosticism and a textbook on philosophy or religion he's done a lot of things and also this is this is kind of interesting so though only i don't normally stream at this time uh what's it's it's 8 p.m where i'm at but it's 10 a.m in singapore where andrew's at and it's 1 p.m correct me if i'm wrong here graham 1 p.m in melbourne so that this was like the only time of the day that's going to work for all of us this is just nuts that we're able to do this first of all talk live on the air and stream it to youtube this is crazy uh well anyway so tonight's discussion on the cosmological argument will feature a short presentation from dr loke followed by open dialogue for basically two hours that's that's the way that this is gonna run tonight so uh and also i should let you know there's no guarantee of audience participation tonight so if you have questions for our dialogue partners just hold them with you we i don't know that we'll be able to get to them tonight so just keep that in mind uh when you're thinking about sending in super chats and that kind of stuff so with that i'm going to pass over to dr loke to give his short presentation i i think right before we went live he said it's going to be around five minutes maybe a little bit longer so we'll get out of the presentation we'll do the presentation and then we're gonna pass it directly over to graham and we'll open it up to to open dialogue so with that let me go ahead and start my uh my screen here and you're ready to go andrew just take it away with your presentation well thank you so much cameron for organizing this and thank you graham for participating it's good to talk to you again on the kalam cosmological arguments so the title of our discussion today is is the cosmological argument sound and so to assess whether the argument is sound or not we really have to look at the premise to see whether the premises are true and also the influence right to see whether it's valid and so let me lay out the argument first right so that we can access whether the column cosmetic argument is sung or not now the column argument is traditionally formulated by dr william nick craig is as follows but premise one whatever begins to exist as a course premise two the universe began to exist and therefore the universe has a cause now dr craig argues that further analysis of the course of the universe shows that this course possesses various theistic properties now in order to make the deduction of these thesis properties explicit i have reformulated the column argument as follows and this reformulated version can be found in rudimentary form in my book god and ultimate origins which i sent to graham and it's also is elaborated in a forthcoming book which i have just finished writing is titled the technological and column cosmological arguments revisited right this will be published by springer nature next year so this reformulated version of the argument goes as follows premise one there exists a series of causes and effects and changes right so you know for example i came from my parents right my parents came for my parents parents parents my grandparents right that there is a series right of course and effects and and so the question is whether this series could it be an infinite regress or not right so um so that either there is an infinite regress that avoids the first course or there is or the members are joined together like a loop that avoids the first course right so either it's joined together or it's not joined together right if it's not joined together and if there is no infinite regress then there is a first course right so that's what babys2 is saying right so the series either has infinite regress that avoids the first course or is a loop closed loop or it has a first course and then in premise three right rules out infinite regress right it is not the case that the series has an infinite regress that avoids the first course and i and this premise need to be defended right uh and i shall defend this premise with a number of arguments later on right so i'm going to highlight the premises that requires defending in yellow color right and so premise 3 will need to be defended right and premise four uh also need to be defended you know it says that it is not the case that its members are joined together like a closed loop right now given premise three and four the conclusion follows uh therefore the series has a first course right from uh one to four and then the next question is we need to ask so what is the first course right so the first course uh since the first course is the first then it must be unquote right uh and since whatever begins to exist has a course and this is called the causal principle which i will be defending later on as well right so given this premise the first course must be without beginning and since every change is an event which has a beginning as something or part of thing gains or loses a property the first course must be initially changeless right so a ch so i define a change as an event right and a change or event is something that has a beginning right because what what is a change a change is something or part of the thing gaining or losing a property right so when it gains a property it begins right the change begins the event begins right so um a change on an event is something that has beginning now i already argued in uh early establishment i already stated in premier 7 that the first course has no beginning right and therefore the first course cannot be an event right it cannot be because since the event has a beginning right and that and so what this implies is that the first course is not an event right so the first course is not say the big bang because the big bank is an event right and it it and the big bank has the beginning right and by the beginning what i mean is something that is uh finite in temporal extents in the earlier then direction and without a temporal edge right so so we know that the big bang happened around 13.8 billion years ago right so it is finite in the earlier then direction it has a beginning right a 13.8 billion years ago right and he has a time for edge um so it's an event right so uh it has a beginning now the big bang cannot be the first course right because it has a beginning whereas the first course has no beginning and so the first course is not an event right and so what this means is that the first course must be initially changeless right because it's not a change it's not even so it must be initially changeless now um since the first course is initially changeless it is transcendent and immaterial now but by transcendent i mean something that is beyond our usual common experience right because our experience our normal experience is right and it is also um not material because uh according to physics material things are constantly changing so and therefore this means that the first course is not a quantum system because a quantum system is constantly changing according to uh heisenberg uh uncertainty principle right there's constant quantum fluctuations right so the first cost is not a big bang the first course is not a quantum system the first course is transcendent the first course is immaterial now we need to ask how how does how does the first course cost an event right uh how does the first course cost the series of events now in order to cost an event say the big bang for example or otherwise right so whatever events right from an initially changed state the first course must have the following two properties right the first course must have the capacity to be the originator of the events in a way that is undetermined by prior events right since the first course is the first right so you cannot have something causing the first cost to change right because the first course is the first and so the first course must be able to initiate the event by itself and it must also have the capacity to prevent itself from changing but otherwise the first course would not have been initially changeless and existingly and existing beginninglessly without the first without the events or the change right and so um having these two properties implies that the first cause must have libertarian freedom right it must have the freedom to change and also the freedom to prevent itself from changing and so this dual capacity characterized libertarian freedom which implies that the first cause is an agent right it's a person who is able to freely bring about an event now uh at this point the cosmological argument can be combined with other arguments right so for example it can be combined with the logical argument and and you know we can say that in order to bring about our universe with this fine tuning and order the first course must be highly intelligent right to to to bring about such a fine-tuned and highly ordered event uh now i i'm i'm i'm not sure we might not have time we may not have enough time to talk about the technological argument today right so uh we will see right we may or may not have time right but uh um i'll just put it here first right and in any case right the other the rest of the properties right uh is is really sufficient right to establish a conclusion right so a first course there is uncourse beginners initially changeless transcendent immaterial has libertarian freedom it's an it's a it's a personal creator of the universe right and therefore a creator of the universe exists right so this is the these are the premises of the argument which are going to defend today and so when we look at this argument we can identify what are the crucial premises of the argument well the crucial premises is to rule infinite regress right and i argue for this in chapters two and three of my book i offer a number of arguments right to rule out different regress and the other crucial step is to rule out a closed loop right i argue for this in chapter four where i i demonstrate that such a close loop is viciously circular right um and so it cannot exist and then we need to establish a causal principle which i argue for in chapter 5 of my book using a modus tollens argument right which i think we will discuss later on and then establishing the libertarian freedom of the first course right i argue for this in chapter 6 of my book right so this is the outline of my book right and we know that the conclusion of a sound argument a deductively valid argument with true premises must be true right so if if these premises are true then the conclusion follows right there exists a creator of the universe right and so the key question is whether are these premises true or not and this is what we'll be discussing today now um before uh i go on before we go on let me just highlight some points of agreement right between me and graham right so graham has argued against a circle of courses a close loop in his writing so um he has argued that it is a fundamental causal principle that if one thing is the cause of second thing and second thing is the cause of a third thing then the first thing is a course of third thing however if there could be a circle of causes then it could be the sub there are things that are causes of themselves but nothing can be a cause of themselves of itself since causes by definition are causally prior to their effects and and so therefore there couldn't be a closed loop right and i want to say i agree right and so we don't have to discuss this premise right for today so what we need to discuss is rather an infinite regress whether whether is there infinite regress or whether the question principle is true and whether the first cause has the freedom i'm trying to keep the the discussion as simple as possible right to keep it as focused as possible right and in order to keep it as focused as possible i also want to mention another point which is that in order to establish an infinite in order to rule out an infinite regress right at least five arguments have been offered right and each of these arguments are independent of each other right so for example um there is the familiar hybrid hotel argument right the argument from the impossibility of concrete actual abilities there is also the familiar argument from the impossibility of transversing an actual internet and then uh and these two arguments i defend in chapter two in my book right and then there's an argument from the viciousness of dependence regrets which i argue for in chapter three on my book and then there are other also other arguments uh say for example the famous grim reaper paradox which uh exam crews like robert kuhns have offered right and also the methuselah diaries paradox now any one of these arguments will be sufficient right so for today's discussion i don't have to defend all five right i only need to defend one of them and so if i can defend all of them then we can move on right we don't have to waste time talking about all the other arguments right and so for today's discussion i would i will not be i won't be defending the hubert hotel arguments right i won't be defending the first argument right because the first argument will take a lot of time right uh the argument from the impossibility of concrete actually may take infinite time to discuss now it is argument that's very complicated it involves a lot of complexities about whether it's got infinite all this right so um a proponent of the column does not have to depend it does not have to defend this argument it's not necessarily committed to this argument right uh because uh he might only need to defend one of the rest that'll be sufficient right so for today's discussion i won't be defending the first one um i i will be defending the third one right the novel argument in my book and maybe one or two orders right we'll see how it goes right uh and so this is uh to spell out uh what i'll be doing right for today's discussion so i'll start with the third one right uh but before i do that uh i'd like to pause here and that's the end of my introduction and um i'd like to ask graham if uh he has any questions or any comments okay so there's a lot to talk about it's an understatement um so i like to start with the question about the kind of ground rules of the discussion because it does bear on some of the things that you said um we might just agree to disagree about whether god exists presumably neither of us is going to think that just asserting okay whatever your stance is is enough to to establish something about your position right so i i can't just stand up and say well look god doesn't exist so game over we can go home right so when we have an argument and it's got some premises and the conclusion is that god exists or that god doesn't exist the question is what needs to be done with respect to the premises in order for us to be any further down the track than we would have been if we just asserted the conclusion of the argument because it seems as though what happens is you just assert the premises of that argument when you present it and we've just shifted our position slightly instead of saying god doesn't exist game over i say that whatever begins to exist has an explanation and from that i can get to my conclusion uh and so i say game over it doesn't seem like i've made any more progress so i'm kind of curious about the ground rules for the assessment what what exactly you want to claim about your argument what status the premises of the argument are supposed to have in your view so let's start with that okay um i'm going to claim that the premises can be defended by for the sub-arguments right as i said earlier on uh there are at least uh uh five arguments to show that infinite regress is not possible and i'm going to present that right and so and i'm also going to defend an argument for the course of principle right begin to exist right has a course i'm going to offer that model i'm going to offer the modus tolerance argument to establish that right and we can talk about that later on right so i'll be talking about those yeah that sounds as though there'll just be a new set of arguments with new premises and if we disagree about those then we still haven't made any progress right and there's a you might say think there's a looming regress here right what's going to what's going to be a satisfactory stopping point in this conversation if each time you give an argument it turns out that i don't accept one of the premises right i mean it's perfectly fine that might be how it goes are you do you think that at some point you're going to that that you do in fact reach premises that just can't be resisted or um is yes that's what fine ultimately that's going to be that we that we've just shifted from asserting one claim to asserting a bunch of other claims whose epistemic standing is no better than the initial claim was oh sorry who's i don't know who's standing in debate is no better than the initial claim was well um i'm going to present the premises and if you disagree then i want to know why you disagree right you have to offer reasons for why you disagree and i'm going to offer reasons why they are true right so if i'm able to offer reasons why they are true and you're not able to offer reasons why you disagree then i think the premise is established in our discussion and then we can move on right right so um and when you say off of reasons uh you what what have you got in mind exactly well you'll take a look at that i suppose i say i believe this and here's some other things that i believe that clearly that clearly fit well with it is that offering a reason by my lights i might it might even be where i to hold everything else fixed and just take accept your claim my view would become contradictory right that's what you would expect surely that's a very good reason for me to resist taking on your claim yeah so if you offer something else let's say for example another possibility yeah then we can discuss that and i can offer reasons to try to refute those possibilities right yeah so that's what i'm going to try to do yeah i think you know this is all very general right we have to go into the details of the argument in order to see how even so i'm not sure about that i'm going to there's a kind of question about ground and about what the goal is here that i'm not clear about right because so let me say something about why um i think that it's quite obvious that theory is prior to argument that is the fundamental thing is what claims you think are true not what arguments you think a sound one way of thinking about this is once you've got a theory and let's assume it's a consistent theory once you've got a theory that just determines for an enormous stack of arguments which ones you think are sound and which ones you don't moreover when you come to assess an argument the determination of whether it's sound turns on your attitudes towards the premises whether you think the premises are true or not so that's the fundamental thing the fundamental thing is theory not arguments and so talking about the soundness of arguments doesn't look like it's the proper focus what we should be talking about is the theories and who you know which theory is true or not that doesn't mean there's no role for argument there one obvious role for argument is someone's got a theory but it's inconsistent and you can show them that it is more generally someone's got a theory but they haven't noticed that it's got certain consequences so you start from their premises the claims that they accept and you derive something that's uncomfortable for them now i can see why you would be you would be interested in arguments because that's useful information if my view is inconsistent i need to know that right then i have a chance of improving it if my view entails something that i'm going to be uncomfortable with i need to know that because then i know that i need to rethink part of my position either i've got to accept the uncomfortable thing and get rid of other things i believe or i've got to throw away something i already believed you know so that so that my view doesn't entail the uncomfortable thing but that seems to me that's the kind of proper place for derivation and argument in these discussions and the question about which arguments a sound just isn't really an interesting question to talk about so there's a kind of second but this is again part of the why i'm interested in what the ground rules are well i can agree with what you have just found out right so you just follow that you know it's only different percent of theory you can provide some uh facts or evidence know that it's inconsistent to theory and then you have to reaching right i'm okay with that ground rule actually and by the way the premises i'm going to defend for example some of them are grounded in our immediate experience okay so for example uh the modus tollens arguments which i'm going to defend for the course of premise right it is going to say that it's right if something began to exist on course into existence and so um but we don't experience those other things begin to exist on course and therefore it's not the case that something begin to exist on course right so in this case i have little argument and the premises can be can be defended by our immediate experience right uh so this is how i'm going to defend my argument this is just an example right yeah so so maybe we should turn to working our way through the um the claims in the argument and unpacking them a bit so i'm so let's start with at the beginning with the claim that they're a causal series all right okay i'm kind of happy with that i i think that it's important to ask about what the causal relator are at this point so we can think of causal reality as a network what are the nodes in the network there are two different ways of thinking about this we might think about events so we might think of primarily causation is a relation between events or we might think of causation as a relation between things and in actual practice we just move backwards and forwards kind of seamlessly between thinking about the course of relations events and thinking about them as things and i think there's a reason for that which is that the kind of i mean i hear i'm going to follow davidson the kind of natural way of thinking about events is that they involve changes in the properties of things right so that's why that's just what events are and so if you've got the events if you've got a kind of complete account of all the events you can just read off what things there are and what their properties are at all times and how they changed i think on the other hand you've got a complete account of all the things and all their properties and relations then you can just read off from that information what all the events are having said all of that i'm inclined to think that the primary way of thinking about causation the kind of more fundamental ways in terms of events and that the relation you know appealing to things as causes is a kind of derivative but that's fine right it's not to deny that things are causes it's just that we can think about causal reality in either of these ways so that's by way of background to the therocausal series i just want to check that your understanding here kind of matches mine yeah i agree that uh causes uh can be things or events yeah it can be either one uh it can be uh yeah so i have no problem there yeah it can be material course it can be efficient because i'm referring to either one of these sections yeah okay so in particular in your argument we're going to be interested in uh causes of occurrences of events so causes of events and we're also going to be interested in causes of the existence of things which we're thinking of as causes of things um i'll just park that for later yeah so that was that's all i wanted to say about the first premise i'm happy with the idea that there's um that there's such a thing as causal reality a network of items related by relations of cause and effect uh i should flag although this discussion is between the two of us uh and we've reached agreement on this there are people who are going to reject this picture people there are people who are skeptical about causation and there's nothing since we're not defending this premise we haven't said anything that um is um going to convince those people to to join in the conversation i'm quite happy to leave it like this i'm just making a point about the status of the premise right it's contestable and it's contested but we agree that it's true well uh in my book i actually offered additional arguments against those causal skeptics right uh yeah so i don't have arguments against them but since uh you are not a cause skeptic i think for our discussion we can leave it aside yeah right except remembering there's a whole lot of people watching the discussion so yeah but but we're but since it's our conversation we will just set that to one side okay the next thing the next premise was that there are no causal loops um in the background it seemed like you're accepting the claim that causation is transitive if a cause is b and if a is a cause of b and b is the cause of c then a's a course of c and you're also accepting that nothing causes itself right causations irreflexive and from those two things it's just an entailment that there are no causal warps right and you gave the little argument that i give for that so um there are two assumptions in that argument uh one of which i think is really solid which is the um nothing causes itself i just think that's i actually think that's just kind of incoherent and the other one that causation's transitive is controversial but again since we agree on it we probably don't need to discuss it further people in the audience who disagree that causation is transitive still [Music] right and there are lots of people there are lots of people i'm i'm kind of curious uh sorry i got my hat off uh i'm kind of curious what that sound was too andrew are you are you uh yeah i'm sorry i think that yeah there's somebody who is fixing the some things upstairs is unexpected i'm sorry yeah i'll i'll continue um if it comes back i might just pause rather than try and talk over it so yeah yeah yeah so so people who don't think that causation is transitive uh there are plenty of people out there who think that there can be causal loops so there are plenty of people who think that there could be time travel into the past for example and you'd get you'd get a kind of causal loop there are some people who thought that it could be that in fact if you think about causal reality it's one giant loop we haven't really given a good re reason for those people to change their mind because we just insisted on the transitivity principle which they're going to reject but again for the purposes of our discussion we're both happy to do that so we can just move on well in my book i did offer a reason right to for those people to change their mind right so i argue in my book chapter four on my book that such a close cause look will be a vicious regret and so on that and so um i i know i often argument to prove that it can't be a loop right so for those people who disagree you know they can check out my book and try to review the argument that i presented but since you also agree with me that there can be a loop so for the sake of discussion except that i don't agree that there would be a vicious regress there i mean if you've got to cause a loop each thing happens once it's not like it happens over and over that's a that's a kind of infinite recurrence not a causal loop now in my book i distinguish between a dynamic loop and a static loop right so a dynamic loop will be will suffer from the problem of infinite regress which i offered other arguments against right whereas a static loop right uh which uh tries to open up this course will suffer from the problem of vicious regress right because you'll be like saying that uh my beginning of existence depends on my parents my parents of beginning or existence depends on my grandparents and then my grandparents beginning existence eventually ultimately depend on my beginning to exist right so you know it is a vicious dependence regress right that's what i'm trying to argue for yeah right so that sounded like there was a just a transitivity principle that was being invoked yeah but it is a dependence relation right so we have to so i i i defended causality as a dependent relation in chapter five of my book right uh so so that's that seems right but the people people who are going to disagree about this are not going to think of the causal relation you know if a cause is b then b is causally dependent upon a if they reject transitivity they're going to reject that transitivity as well is the point so a sort of consistent development of that view is not going to accept the premise that you are relying on and giving the further argument but anyway let's move on right that's um that's because because we don't disagree on this point um okay so the next thing is about infinite regress and you quoted me as rejecting causal loops you could also have quoted me as in a certain sense rejecting infinite regress as well because there are plenty of places where i've said if you hold my toes to the fire and you say what do you think is most likely i'm going to say it's most likely that there's no infinite regress right that i don't think that there's any infinite regress of causes uh i've been saying that sort of thing for about a decade now so there's plenty of places where i'm sorry um right it's it's quite in some ways it's a sort of weak claim right so i said if you hold my toes to the fire if you force me to make a choice i'm going to go that way but i certainly don't think that it's in any way irrational to hold the control the competing view right that there's an infinite regress right so there's still plenty to talk about but it's not clear that there's much i mean what we're going to be arguing about isn't where the truth lies but rather about the force of the arguments that you can make for the conclusion that there isn't an infinite regress i also think um if there isn't one there couldn't be one so my position is quite in in a kind of the sense of metaphysical modality so my position as with as where the truth lies is not different from yours but my position on the what's the range of reasonable opinion here i think is quite different from yours because i think people can reasonably disagree about both the possibility and the kind of actuality of infinite regress yes i think what you said is uh quite correct i i think uh we can agree on this premise uh you may have uh but i may have stronger reasons and you may have uh less less strong reasons but uh which uh so um yeah but uh i i can discuss the reasons why i think right it is irrational to hold regrets but i but at this point in time i just want to focus on which points do we disagree right uh so so um yeah so since you agree that there's no input requests or even though your assessment or the strength or the argument is different from mine but since you agree that's going to request i think we can move on right so because i want to focus i want to keep this discussion as focused as possible on those points right so what we're going to get to then is the conclusion from this there are causal series there are no causal loops there's no um infinite regress and transitivity because we want to throw that in as well um we'll get to there are first causes that is there are causal items that cause other things but aren't themselves caused right so we certainly don't get uniqueness out of the premises that we've got that there's just one first cause you can add that in by saying if there are first causes then there's exactly one add that in as a premise and then you'll definitely get out the conclusion that there's exactly one first chords um and i don't know whether you want to add that in as a further premise or not i guess you do because in the kind of presentation of the argument what you said there is a first cause which is ambiguous between there's exactly one and there's at least one right but you went on to talk about it as if it was exactly one i've got a quick question for for andrew because in one of the premises was your causal principle whatever begins to exist as a cause uh remind me the relevance of that causal principle because it sounds like graham what he's agreed to already basically we're ready to talk about stage two type arguments that connect to first cause we haven't got to that key premise yet we're still coming to it right because that's the next premise right once we've once we've got that there's first causes uh the next thing the thing that i'm going to dispute is that whatever begins to exist has a cause i'm going to dispute that right so so that's going to turn out to be the key thing that we're going to talk about yeah yeah so then so then remind me yeah remind me i i assume it's not just me yes remind me and the audience how that's relevant because to me it sounds like if we've got a first cause then we could go immediately into looking at arguments that identify first cause as god so explain to me how this causal principle yeah so the relevance the relevance of the course of principle is that putting the course of principle by putting the customizable i'm trying to show that the first course has no beginning that's the key right because whatever begins to exist as a course if the if we accept the course of principle that other begins to exist as a course uh and this will imply that the first course has no beginning right uh and so that is the relevance for our discussion graham do you see that it has more relevance sorry um i i understand that that's what andrew wants to do right so it's it's important for him to establish this so that he can establish properties of the first cause right uh because and so his argument differs from the kind of calam syllogism in various ways but importantly in that the conclusion is um trying to get out some of the properties of what andrew takes to be the cause of the existence of the universe and he wants to be able to establish in this single argument that it's free and immaterial and transcendent initially changeless and so on all of those properties and that's why that's why this matters okay and and let me just elaborate a little bit yeah that's right so what graham say is correct uh and uh because i also want to show that the first course is not an event for example right uh as i mentioned as i explained earlier on an event is something that has a beginning right so sometimes people may wonder could the could the big bang event be the first course right so i'm gonna i argue against that by arguing that whatever begins to exist has a course right and so the big bang uh since the beginning has a beginning it cannot be the first course right because the big bang would have a course right since it has a beginning right and that's why the defending the course of principle is so important right in the context of these arguments and the other point i want to uh elaborate uh just on that is that just now graham also asked me do i uh try to show that there is only one first clause or could that be more than one first course right so in my argument uh so graham noticed that my argument is ambiguous right i say that there is a first clause right so what i was trying to show there is that you know there must be at least one right there must be at least one right uh as to whether there is one or more than one right we will have to um so so there must be at least one means that you know um that must if the premises of my argument are true the conclusion followed that there must be at least one creator right so whether there's more than one creator or not right we have to think about other considerations right so for example some people may argue from beckham's razor right that one creator is simpler uh than more than one creator right so that is opens raiser consideration and other people can argue might argue that from the consideration of say the universe the universal applicability of the laws of physics for example so we know that uh say for example uh the law of gravitation applies not only on earth but also on the sun also on far away galaxies right it applies everywhere right uniformly around the universe and some people has argued that well the best explanation for this uniformity of of loss of nature around the universe is because it proceeded from one designer one first course right so this is some another argument that some people have offered and then other people have offered from arguments based on special revelation based on miracles the resurrection of jesus jesus claims revealed to us that there is only one uh creator right a creator who is a triune trinity or persons right so these are additional arguments right that um other people have offered right for for showing that there is only one creator right but for today's discussion uh um i think we we we have no time right to go into those other arguments uh so i just want to focus on what is essential right to the column argument which is to show that there must be at least one creator do you mind if we for at this point go into your argument in defense of the causal principle i think that's a good place to go unless graham it looks like you yes i'm saying so so i wanted to say something about that premise since i'm going to reject it uh and then andrew can i get one because this is where this is where the kind of rubber hits the road at least as far as our discussion goes so um i think that uh what what we want is is some sort of general principle and my general principle is going to be that everything that occurs has an explanation and everything that exists has an explanation has an explanation not has a cause now that means now what do i think there is well i think that there's the natural universe so sorry there's natural reality we might as well pretend that it's just the universe the universe in which we live but i mean we can complicate the discussion by considering a range of hypotheses that might mean that natural reality is bigger than our universe but that just introduces needless complexities so let's pretend that natural reality is just our universe and if we think about what it looks like there's an initial event and an initial thing the initial thing that exists is the universe right and the initial event we might think of as the universe is expanding so at t equals zero the universe exists and the universe is expanding and that's that any initial event includes what's happening at t equals zero and what exists at t equals zero now according to me that what there is at t equals zero so what's happening and what there is is necessary so the explanation of what's happening there and the explanation of what exists there is that it's necessary it has to exist it has to occur everything else setting aside what's happening at t equals zero is explained causally so there's nothing that happens subsequently that doesn't have a cause so there's nothing that occurs subsequently that doesn't have a cause there's nothing that exists subsequently that doesn't have a cause the universe begins at t equals zero table zero is the origin point it's the beginning of natural reality right so this what exists and what occurs at t equals zero does not have a cause but it has an explanation and the more fundamental principle the principle of sufficient reason is couched in terms of explanation not in terms of causes right so i don't accept that whatever begins has a cause i say whatever begins has an explanation but it's only non-initial things whatever non-initial things exist and occur have causes right so andrew and i disagree about the kind of fundamental principle to appeal to at this point so while i say there's just natural reality he says there's more stuff there's a god who causes the initial um what's what there is at t equals zero what happens and what exists at t equals zero and also causes there to be t equals zero as well i guess is responsible for the existence of time as well okay so that's that's the significance of as i see it at this premise and it's the point where i just disagree with what andrew says okay so i'm going to offer a number of arguments to show why is it that whatever begins to exist has a cause right um i have a number of arguments let me present the first one the first argument okay um so to let's to explain the first argument let me start by sharing a story right so think about why is it the case that my newly built house is the way it is for example rather than a pile of rocks right why it's a house or house why is it not a power rocks well the answer is simple because the house builder makes it this way right what begins to exist is brought about and constrained by the cause right so if the cause were not the house builder but a huge explosion rather than the house builder what begins to exist will be rubble right will be a power rocks right a rubber rather than a house right so what this shows what this simple story is trying to show is that whatever begins to exist what begins to exist is constrained determined in some ways by the course however if my house begins to exist on course then that means that then that what that means is that there is no cause which makes it the case that is a house rather than a rubber or other kinds of things that begins to exist on calls right there is there'll be no constraint right on whatever begins to exist in the present circumstances from beginning to exist on course in which case we will expect to see other things begin to exist unconstrained and cause right we may see a rubble begin to exist on calls like explosion beginning to exercise but that's not what we see right and therefore it is not the case that something can begin to exist on course right so so this is a simple story right to illustrate the point right now to elaborate on this argument to make it more rigorous and to apply it to the beginning of the universe we can phrase this argument like this right so if physical reality right if the whole universe the entire space-time block for example if this is uncaused um then there will be no cause which makes it the case that only this space-time block only this physical reality rather than other similar finite space-time blocks or other things with temp uh with beginning within the block and having uh from beginning to exercise right there will be no cost that makes it the case that only the universe began to exist on course and the properties of the universe and the properties of other things which differentiate within them will be had by them only when they had already existed right moreover the circumstances around us is compatible with those other things beginning to exist right so for example the circumstances around me is compatible with say electric field increasing in strength right um and then uh you know we know that other universes could also uh the fact that all universes exist doesn't mean that other news cannot exist right so scientists speculate about multiple universe right so uh if our universe began to exist on course other uh universe uh would also be uh could could also begin to exercise and they would because there will be no property they push that differentiate between them right until after they already begin to exist on course and so what this means is that um given that there's there'll be no constraint whatsoever about what begins to exist other universe would also begin to exist on course and they may crash into our universe right so nowadays scientists uh are saying that some of them are saying that they are evidence of multiple universe right how because how do we know that because some of them claim that there are cold spots right on the cosmic microwave background radiation there are some spots on the cosmic microwave background relation which some scientists suspect right could be other universe could be left behind by other universe impacting on our own universe right so whether that is that is confirmed or not i mean i don't think it's confirmed yet right but uh what did show but in any case the point here is that if other universe if something if our universe began exists on cause other universe will also begin to exist on calls and you know they'll crash into each other right because so many other possible universes are out there right so they will just disrupt each other and our universe will be very different right the the cosmic microwave background radiation will be vastly different right if it's unconstrained right uh and and so um our universe would have been very different it would not have been the way that it is right so um so but but that's not what we observed right because what you observe is a causal order right that's graham agreed but premise one says that no there is also order right it is not the case that no things just begin to exist on cause universes just banging into our universe disrupting the cnb disrupting our space time or electric field begins to exist on calls no we don't see uh uh energy consuming changes beginning to exist on calls so we don't see those kind of destruction right so our experience uh falsified right uh um our experience denied the consequence right of premise one right and therefore uh based on motorsports right we can conclude that it's not the case right that our universe began to exist on course okay so to summarize the argument again right the argument is this is a modus tollens argument right it denies the consequence right uh premise one if all rivers began to exist on course other things right other universes other events would also begin to exist on course why because firstly there will be no cause that makes it the case that only the universe rather than other things began to exist on course right you'll be unconstrained and secondly right whatever properties that differentiate the universe and other things will be had by these things only when they had already begun right and thirdly the circumstances is compatible with other things beginning to exist right so given one two and three this implies that there will be no difference between our universe and other things and other events where beginning to exist on course is concerned right there'll be no difference between them where between the beginning of our universe and the beginning of other things where beginning to exist on course is concerned so if there if there will be no relevant difference what this means is that other things would also begin to exist on course right so this is premise one premise two it is not the case that those other things or events begin to exist on course right uh according to our experience right it falsifies it denies the consequence of premise one and therefore it is not the case that our universe began to exist on course right so the conclusion follows right so this is the first argument that i have i have another argument uh against in fact i have a few arguments against uh a few arguments for the course of principle right so that's the first argument my second argument against the causal principle is this now um i recognize that i think it actually might be best to let graham come in on that one before we move on to another argument i think that's a good idea um so what i said was that the view is that the initial state is necessary right nothing else there's nothing else that's necessary what there is is natural reality with the necessary initial state and then subsequent causal evolution i also said that for the sake of argument we pretend that our universe exhausts natural reality because obviously if we think that there's more it's not going to be the big bang that's necessary it's going to be the origin of natural reality in the background space in which the many universes sit for example that's going to be the thing that's necessary that's fine either way there's going there's an initial state and then there's causal evolution and it's impossible for anything to belong to natural reality except by way of being part of the necessary initial state or part of the causal evolution nothing can pop into existence and caused and i have i've written lots of stuff um defending the view that things just can't pop into existence on cause so it's a necessary consequence of the view that the only thing that exists without a cause is the initial state the initial the initial event and the initial i'm going to go back to talking about the universe because it's just much simpler than thinking about the multiverse case or other complex examples right i mean they just don't add anything to the um to the argument to think about them they just add complexity right so there was nothing in what you said that gave me a reason to prefer the view that um god there's a necessarily existing god that makes the universe to the view that the initial state of the universe um both the initial event and the initial object the universe and the universe's expansion say are necessary metaphysically necessary the claims that you made about consistency and so on are just false from my point of view right sorry okay let me shall i reply to that yeah sure okay so um now we are not talking about god yet right so god comes later right but at this point we are debating about the course of principle right now don't just say this we're comparing two world views that's what's going on the idea is to work out which one's better it's important to have this is it's important to have enough elaboration part of your story is about god and you have to think about the status that god's going to have in your story versus the status that the initial universe is going to have in mind because you're definitely going to say that your god exists of necessity right and the points that you want to make about the necessity of my claims about the necessity of the initial state better not be ones that undermine what you want to say about the necessity of god right because otherwise your overall position will be inconsistent okay thank you for clarification so let me reply to your objections right so you basically raise uh two objections one is that uh you you raise the claim that the initial state is necessary right uh and has a beginning right um but my argument shows that uh the initial state which has if the initial state has a beginning then it cannot be the only thing that begins to exist on course because as i've shown other things would also begin to exist on course but that is not the case and therefore it is not the case that the initial state has a beginning and it's on course so what this implies is that uh the initial state is not necessary right i mean you're you're asserting the possibility you're assuming you're asserting the claim that is necessary without offering any argument to prove that it's necessary whereas i have argued whereas i have offered an argument a motors tolerance argument arguing that the initial state uh cannot begin to exist uh it's not the case that initial state began to exist and has no cost right and what and so my argument would imply that it is not the case that the initial state is necessary right so so um yeah so that's how i said that dynamic right because you make an assertion without argument uh whereas i make uh an argument right to argue against your association right uh so that's my point now concerning the second point let me finish please uh so because uh graham raised two so constantly the second point you you said that uh you are going to pretend the universe exhausts all of natural reality right now i think there is a distinction here between uh the array and the dictate right so you might define the universe as everything or every physical things that exists right but i'm seeing and i'm thinking of this in in in deray terms right so uh well yeah so you you might want to refer to this um universe as as it is right that this universe is the only thing that uh exists right uh however i'm arguing that that could be uh they are logically possible there are these logically pos know that they are various logically possible universe right by logical possible i mean that no things that don't that things that does not violate the laws of logic right so uh it could be uh that could be a bigger universe it could be another universe which is uh say lower entropy or higher entropy at the beginning for example right there all kinds of possible logically possible universe right and my argument is that if there is no cause that determines that this particular possibility be actualized then there's no then um the difference between this particular logical probability and other logical possibility right there will be no difference between them right so other logical possibilities would also be actualized as well right and and our world will have been very different right so so what you said does not deny the premises nor the inference of my arguments and so my argument stands now the third point i want to mention is that you mentioned about so what's different so what about god existing of necessity right uh so my response is that the difference between god and what you say about the initial state is that your initial state has a beginning right whereas god or my view has no beginning right and so since god has no beginning no god is not god successful to the course of principle because the cause of principle only applies to things that has beginning right the course of principle says whatever begins to exist has a cause but since god has no beginning that god is not uh no the cause of principle is not applicable to god right and so the course of principle does not refute uh the the idea that god exists right and one more point is that the difference between the theory that god exists and your theory is this right because your theory if on your theory the initial state begin um on course there will be no cause that has the capacity to determine that our universe will be fine-tuned and highly ordered i mean that is the key point of your this discussion with uh william quick right when you're the debate about the applicability of mathematics to physical world right on your view no it's good contingency and not it's not any brutal contingency is worse than that it's unconscious there's no there's no cause that can that has the capacity to explain why is it that our universe is so fine-tuned and highly ordered whereas on my view yes it involves a group contingency in the sense that god freely created universe there is good contingency on both views right but my view has an additional advantage which your view does not have which is that on my view the group contingency is uh is freely viewed by god for a reason right it's really great by the god who has the capacity to bring about a universe which is to bring about a universe which is highly ordered and fine-tuned why because on my view god is highly intelligent right so a highly intelligent god will will have the capacity to bring about a universe that is highly ordered uh and which is fine tune right and so my my view has an advantage over your view right so uh these are the three points that uh i wanted to say in response to what you have said so i think there are four points and i don't think i'm going to be able to remember more than the last one so i'll talk about it and then you can remind me about the others so um you'll know if you were listening to my debate with william lane craig that i didn't claim that the fine tuning is brutally contingent i claim that it's necessary and so it has exactly the same explanation in in saying that the initial state uh exists of necessity assuming that the values of the constants are determined at that point they couldn't have been otherwise right that just falls out of what i've already committed myself to so it's not an extra assumption that i need to make so the idea that there's a brute contingency there i think is just mistaken of course it could be that the fixing of the values of the constants happens at some non-initial point as a result of some process in that case on any view it will turn out to be a brute contingency and that's fine but on the assumption that it's fixed in the initial state whether it's fixed by god's preferences or it's fixed in the way that i imagine i it'll be necessary okay so let me respond to that right so uh so you're saying that the fine tuning is necessary right you're saying that it is determined right but i want to ask right determined by what because it has no cost right because he has a beginning and no cost right so as i illustrated using my house building technology right if my house if my house began to exist on course then there's no cost that makes it the case that is a house rather than a power of rubble right so on your view there is no cause right that makes it necessary right it just began necessarily right but okay so let me do the same thing on your view god exists of necessity but what's the cause right you don't need causes yeah in the case of god there's no need because as i said god exists beginninglessly right so something that is beginningless it's always has always been like that right because it's beginningless right so given that it's beginningless it is what beginning loss means is that it has always been like that that's what beginning beginningless means right and so um that means that it has always been like that that means that it is necessary because it's because it couldn't have been otherwise it has always been like that right so on my view right based on there is a there is an explanation for why is it that god exists uh on course and the way it is like why god exists necessarily whereas on your view no there is no such reason no such reason can be offered right and it goes against so you're saying there's an infinite regress in the case of god oh no no no there is no infinite regress because god right but is a definite progress there's no beginning right so pick any state there's a state before it because if there is an estate before it then it's a beginning so there's an infinite regress so we've now gone back to somewhere near the beginning and you've taken back one of the premises of your argument oh no uh graham i think you're mistaken because having no beginning doesn't imply an infinite regress why because there are various possibilities there are various possible things which can have no beginning right um so another possibility which or something which has no beginning is something which is timeless or initially changeless as i argue right so if something is initially changeless then there is no infinite regress of change there's no infinite regress of temporal movements for example and so if something is timeless then it has no beginning because beginning is it refers to something that happens in times beginning refers to something that has finite temporal extent right so if god is timeless then he has no temporal extent and therefore he has no beginning so it is not the case that by saying that uh god exists beginninglessly it's not the case that i'm uh committed to i'm committed to the view of and even a regress which we agreed right that's gonna be the case so i think that when you said changeless you must mean there's some extension over which the thing doesn't change it's irrelevant that it's not temporal what matters is that it's an extension right if there was just a single point then there's no there's no sense to be made of the notion of it's not changing if we've just got a single moment right but then the position would be no different from mine you would just have moved back one extra thing that you would have added on at the beginning one extra step but there's clearly an implication of duration when you're talking about changelessness once you've got duration we can ask what's its measure and you've got two possible answers either it's finite or it's infinite if it's infinite you've got regress and you've given up one of your earlier premises if it's finite it's got a beginning and you don't have beginninglessness right you can't even make sense of the notion of changelessness without a duration over which there is no change okay so um you are claiming that by changelessness i'm committed to uh duration right um but that's not the case you're committed to measure right there's got to be an extent you can't say there's just a point and the thing was changeless because nothing changes at a point right you've got to have well something that's measurable okay no that that's wrong actually uh because not by what what a point by a point a point is something within a dimension right but what i'm saying is that god is not in any dimension right god is not in any dimension of time and therefore god is initially changeless so by by saying initially changeless i'm not committed to the view that god exists within a duration which exists within the dimension in fact i'm denying it i'm saying that there's no dimension where god exists changelessly without any dimension without any not not in any point no but there is beyond any dimension that's what i mean by god so by saying that god is changeless i am not committed to perdivision this sounds to me like um it sounds to me um as though the notion of being changeless isn't now doing any work because what you just said i think was that if god's beyond any dimension the notion of change as with lots of other notions is going to have no application right it's not if we go back to the um you know you wanted to say god was beginningless right and the the idea i thought was that this was something that um belonged to a dimension where it made sense to talk about in the beginning rather than not having a beginning and now it turns out that what you're saying is actually that this language language about change beginning and so on just has no application to god it's so so here's an example um in his book on time and eternity brian leftow tried to claim that god's at zero distance from everything right and the reason that he gave was because the notion of distance has no application to guide but you can't make you know the distance between two things is zero just in case they're the same thing right it's entire because the distance zero assumes that it's something that belongs to the field where you can apply a measure to it rather than it being something that's to which the notion of measure is inapplicable right so now i'm wondering whether you're still thinking that you're doing something similar here um when you uh in the discussion that was framed about that whatever begins to exist has a cause well uh what i'm arguing is very very different from uh what you just stated about zero distance right so ideal zero distance is not applicable here because zero implies a measure i mean zero is less than one for example right um so i'm not saying that god exists i'm not saying that god exists with zero distance from any object right because i'm saying that god is beyond the dimension because it's beyond the measure right initially at the initial state right and so um yeah so um so when i say that when i talk about change and beginning now change and change at beginning refers to um things or events right within the temporal dimension right uh and i'm arguing that you know uh god is is not uh initial it's not initially within the temporal dimension right god exists beginning initially without the temporal dimension and so uh though at the initial states right uh there is that is initially changeless initial and is beginningless that change and beginning doesn't apply to god at the initial state of reality so what's initial mine here well initial means uh the original state right so initial is not used as a temporal term right so i'm not saying that god i'm not using the word initially it's not a causal term either initial uh well initial reference i mean initial needs an order initial needs an order right and so we've got an order but we don't have a metric that's what you're saying but we don't need um we don't need a metric in order to have before and after right so i you're so you seem to be saying something stronger than this right that there's no distinction between points right it's not like um god exists at one point and exists at another point so i can't see that i'm actually not seeing now any difference between the view that says that god exists here right what and and the universe comes from god right no notions of um before apply to god so it's like thinking that this is an initial point right there's no real difference between thinking about this as a point i mean in order to make it different you've got to have some notion of duration or extension or something like that otherwise these are just empty words okay so um my first clarification my first response is that by initial i'm referring to an order it is not a temporal order as you said right but it is um say a causal order right because god is the first course right so he's a initial course right right right so that's the very first thing and there's nothing before that in that order yes right there's no there's nothing before it right so this marks in that order an absolute origin right there's there's nothing temporarily before it and there's nothing about it i'm talking about the order you were mentioning right there's nothing sort of odd right so it's the beginning an absolute beginning not beginning with that's the beginning oh no it is it's not a beginning in time right it is it's not so it is a timeless state right forget about time there's all kinds of orders we can have there's temporal order there's causal order there's various orders that we can have when we're talking about the the beginninglessness here we're talking about with respect to the relevant order we agreed that it's that time begins at t equals zero and you want to have something that's before that right and the question is no i understand something that's causally before not temporarily before no okay relative to the causal order right now that causal order um now the question is does it have more than one point in it right because is it going to happen if it's one point then we go back one point and we're at an absolute beginning and it's not beginningless right it with respect to the order that counts which is the causal order right so you don't run together i'm not making any confusions about time we agreed that t equals zero is where time begins according to me that's where everything begins according to you it's not you think there's something before you think there's an order before the question is how many points are there in that order if there's a are there a bunch of them or is there just one if there's just one that's the beginning that point right um graham i think you have misunderstood what i said no so when i said that uh god is prior to god is initial right is prior to the universe i'm not saying that god is temporarily prior right i'm not saying that god is a point before the first point right so let me clarify for this let me clarify right i'm saying that said time begins don't you just i just said this and then you said you're saying it's temporal i said i don't want you to do your again because you've done it about four times already i don't i'm sorry okay so um okay so it's not temporary right uh it is causally prior and the causality prior is not in terms of a point right um there is no point in the costly priority because right so because so it's a duration it's a bunch of points it's a duration something like that why do you say it's division i thought you just i thought you just denied that there's any division before the t is equal to zero causal and with respect to the causal right there's a there's a point and a point and a point say there's a succession of causes right that gives you causal duration it's got nothing to do with time right it's just that you've got to causal order with you've got with um causally causal priority causal posteriority and then we can think about more or less like if you've got a series of causes embedded in a larger series of causes then you can talk about in an intuitive sense without putting a metric on it something like duration right and so the question is we've got this causal order for god right and i want to know how many points one point lots of points [Music] with respect to causation or infinite regress with respect to causation okay so let me explain my view uh clarify give a fuller clarification first right uh so as to remove any misunderstanding right so on my view god exists timelessly and changelessly without the universe and in time with the beginning of the universe right uh so i mean this is a view that william craig has defended for example right i mean there's an alternative view which is defended by adam hendricks which says that no god exists uh in time prior to the universe right i mean that view is also defensible but at this point in time i'm speaking i'm sticking to the first view and i i think that the first view is coherent right because the first view on the first view the god is initially god is uh timeless without the universe right and in that timeless state without the universe there is no point right uh there is only god right there there's no universe right uh and god brought about the universe that's where the points began to exist and in fact i don't like to speak in terms of point actually because you keep using the word point but i don't like the word point because because if you think of time as points no that ends up with lots of paradox right so for example if time is a continuum with many many points you know then we end up then you'll face the grim reaper paradox for example it will face uh you know if time is a continuum with infinite number of points right then you will face the green river paradox you'll face the paragraphs of motion nothing can begin to move if that's the case right because between the last point and the first point of movement movement the the infinite number points in between right so nothing can begin to move in the case right so that's that's the part of the solution so i don't like to think in terms of points right for time right so for time because you've got two choices here you can either go discrete and have discrete moments or you can have density and you'll have points right in the sense that you're now saying is objectionable the problem with discrete time is that nobody's yet been able to make a physics that works with discrete time so our physical theory is all successful physical theories are cached in terms of continuous time if you're going to go with the kind of zeno style objections to continuous time you'll end up in a problem but for the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter we can go discrete right we can suppose that is one discrete um point for god prior to in in the causal order because nothing's happening there's no change right there's nothing that can give it a duration right there's nothing that can give it extension it there's nothing to that that so far that you've said that makes it anything else than an extra causal point at the beginning right now so i don't like that point change less and if we're thinking about that as a state as a continuing state where there's no change happening right there's that that might not that might mean um extended or it might mean point either way it seems to me you're going to get problems but yeah my response is that um it is neither an extension nor a point right it is b it has no dimension because an extension and a point assumes a dimension right a point is a point in the within the dimension a extension also assumes a dimension but as i said earlier on my on my view god exists without the universe without any dimension so it's not a point neither is it an extended mentioned i'm still puzzled by the changeless bit so uh no i'll change those questions so then it sounds like what you're describing just is a beginning as i said it's not a beginning because uh i as i said early on i define a beginning as something that has temporal extension and which is which is finite in the earlier than direction that's what i mean by beginning right whereas here god is not finite in the and and earlier than direction right there is no extension as i said and so uh you can't say that god has a beginning in that sense okay so so let's go back and compare the two views now um so we both agree that there's uh sorry making the simplifications about what what natural reality looks like we've got there's a natural universe right it's got an initial boundary and i say that initial boundary is necessary so there's there's a necessary existence necessary event and there's a causal principle sorry an explanatory principle that says that everything has an explanation and a causal principle that says that all non-initial things have causes so you've you accept that there's the universe you think that the initial state is contingent you think that there's a god who exists in some very hard to describe why beforehand but is the cause of the existence of the universe if we think about the two views and we think about their merits we think about their simplicity and we think about what they can explain then on it seems to me that as far as the universe goes everything gets an explanation either way as far as necessity goes we each agree there's something that that's necessary in terms of entities my view is slightly better because it does without god so insofar as we're interested just in thinking about the explanation of the universe it looks as though my view's winning it looks like it's a better view when we just think about um the theories and their virtues right i don't think that there's anything in any of the arguments that you've given that overturns that view and that seems to me where we are at this point right and then the question about which arguments we think is sound is fully settled by what we say about um in our theories so i say that um that there's an explanation for everything right you think that there's an explanation for everything too right i think that every non-initial thing has a cause you think that every non-initial thing has a cause it's just that your non-initial thing is god whereas my non-initial sorry my initial thing is um the first stage of the universe and your initial thing is god we think all the non-initial things have causes it's not that we're disagreeing about um about very much here but uh the explanatory principles are much the same what we think there is is much the same it's just that you've got this as i see it you've got this idle wheel in your explanatory framework that's not doing anything it's not by not buying you any advantages whatsoever okay let me respond to what you just said right so you are claiming that uh both so you are comparing two different theories here right uh you are saying that uh both theories have equal exponential power but yours is simpler right and therefore yours your theory is more meritorious right now my response is that i have offered a modus tollens argument against the idea that the initial state begins as a boundary begins to exist on course right i give premise one premise two and uh you know if the initial state begin to exit some course other things will also begin to exist on calls but premise two says that's not the case and that all three the conclusion is that the initial state does not begin to exist on course right so i have given a deductive argument and you have not denied either premise right and you're trying to deny that i deny that okay so now uh why do you deny the perspectives because it's necessary that the initial state exists it's necessary for anything to be part of the universe that it's got a causal history that traces back to the initial state um as i said um there's nothing it's impossible for anything to pop into existence without a cause any contingent thing to pop into existence without a cause that's just impossible okay so you know and you don't disagree because you also think that uh my reason for my reason for denying the later part is different from yours right um my on my view right so so what you just said is that uh it is you you deny my premise one you you try to deny my premise one by saying that the initial statement okay yeah so so you well i denied that you did it successfully but anyway let me explain all right so you're not going to say i succeeded i might have been wrong but i certainly succeeded so long as my words didn't okay let me misfire i cannot explain what you just said right what you just said is that um you you reject premise one because you think that the initial state is necessary and then after the initial state everything is caused right everything begins to exist with a course right that's what you say right um yeah now but you didn't offer any proof for what you said you didn't prove that the initial state you don't you didn't offer any arguments sorry i've given you my reasons which was compare the two theories my theory is simpler and there's nothing that's unexplained in my theory that's explained in yours and the guiding principle here is that the best theory the theory you should accept is the one that makes the best trade-off between minimizing simplicity and maximizing explanation right that's my reason right i'm not interested in because because of the point about the the the way that the soundness of arguments is fully determined by theory i'm not interested in the arguments unless you can show by starting with my premises that there's a contradiction or something in my view because then it wouldn't be the best view if it was contradictory but assuming that it passes the contradictions test it's ahead so long as all we're thinking about is this stuff about the origins of the universe because it's the simplest theory that's adequate to all the data right that is the if you want to insist on calling it an argument you can it's not a premise premise conclusion and i'm not going to set it out that way but those are my reasons right and if you've done nothing you've done nothing to undermine those reasons and you can tell given that that's what i think that i reject the premise in the argument that you're just giving right so that argument isn't because it starts from a premise you accept not one i accept i'm just going to say i don't accept that premise and we're still back where we were with uh my theory is more virtuous than yours okay let me say something first which is that simplicity uh is a consideration only if all other things are equal right um however i don't think okay so okay nevermind okay uh but anyway in any case if you disagree with that i can give an additional reason so i understand your reason right so the reason you offer is basically you know is simpler right uh for your view right so but i know that it's important that's not it it's important that it makes the best trade-off between trying to minimize commitments and maximize explanation right now i agree that the only thing we're really interested in is when you do do this on total explanation right but then if i had my way we wouldn't be talking about any arguments at all we'd just be trying to fill in much much more of the data and see how the two theories do with respect to all of the data and we'd probably end up in a kind of it would end in a kind of deadlock because it's so hard to do the evaluation on all of the data but so fast let me jump in real yeah let quick let me jump in you guys have been going for a while and i i just want to get some clarification it's going to help me out and i mean i've been really enjoying just listening you guys go back and forth but i have a question that might help clarify uh something for the audience and myself so graham going back to andrew's argument for the causal principle you said you reject his first premise andrew remind me what that first premise is real quick the first premise is if something begins to exist on course other things and events would also begin to exist on calls because firstly there will be no cause that makes it the case that only this thing rather than other things begins to exist right secondly any differences between this thing and other things will be had by them only when they had already exist and thirdly the circumstances is compatible with other things beginning to exist right so given these three reasons there will be no difference between this something and other things where beginning to exist on con we're beginning to exist on course is concerned and so if this thing began to exist on course we would also expect other things to begin to exist on course right so that is the reason now okay responded by saying that well it's necessary that the initial state right the initial state is necessary but he didn't respond to the three reasons which i gave which shows that the initial state cannot be necessary i mean i've had i've had graham on a couple times well graham yeah i'm gonna try to defend you here so you've you've opted it sounds to me and this is why i'm asking this because i i need some clarification graham it sounds like you still want to hold a causal principle you just want to hold a more modest one you want to say any non-initial item has a cause right is that is that accurate so so that's the causal principle but i also have an explanatory principle which is that everything has an explanation right because some things are explained in terms of their necessity right so so the initial things get explained as being necessary the others it's the causal principle because as you're pointing out because i've got the causal principle but not for the initial thing and i say the initial thing is necessary there's no room for other things to pop into existence without a cause right there couldn't be anything other than the initial things that there are and then it's impossible for anything to pop in right so that's why positions do all the work and so i reject um i mean the assumptions from are us just things that i deny right because the pre because that's that's the basic assumption in the theory so uh graham is assuming that once you have the initial states other things cannot begin to exist on course right once you have an issue he's assuming that but i give three reasons to dispute the assumption right i say that no because if the initial state itself begins to exist on cause there will be nothing that makes a difference between the initial state and other things that comes later right given my three reasons right so your assumption is wrong no but but the theory was that the initial state is necessary so there can't be anything else that goes there well right and then we prepare the theories right if you look at what the consequences of the view are the consequences of the view are that it entails that the three claims that you're making are false right they're just immediate consequences of my view right we just there's a disagreement here you can't you can't make progress by just insisting that things that i say are false this just gets back to the when do we declare who's the winner right if at a certain point you just say i win because we disagree right well then we should never have started on this i should have just said god doesn't exist and i'm going home right if you're going to give an argument that's really going to make a difference it's got to be my theory has virtues that the other theory doesn't have there are things it explains that the other theory can't explain it's simpler than the other theory or the other theory is inconsistent here's a set of claims in that theory and here's how i deduce a contradiction from it they're the moves that are open to you right so andrew okay yeah yeah one one more thing andrew so the initial item the initial the initial state that graham is saying is is necessary that's that's i think the sort of exemption that he's giving the initial state is because it's necessary so when you said that like the initial state is just like any some other thing popping into existence graham is saying that's not the case because the initial item is necessary but if something just randomly pops into existence without a cause that isn't necessary so it's not this it's not the case that these two things are related in the way that you said that they're related yeah i understand that graham is trying to say that the initial state is special right uh the initial state is unlike other states that come later right but my response is i gave three reasons why the initial state cannot be special right and the reason why the initial state cannot be special is because i said the second of my reason is that any properties that differentiate the initial state and other states will be had by them when those things already exist right so what this means is that no the any special property that the initial state might have right will be explanatory vacuous right for explaining why is it that the initial state exists began to exist on course whereas others don't uh so it will be and it will be exponentially because given that the circumstances is also compatible with other things beginning to exist so andrew because graham did you did you understand what he just said i didn't understand it no no so so he talked about compatibility and he talked about vacuity but i say the initial state is necessary so nothing that contradicts the initial state being in the initial state is even possible and it's not vacuous to say that something is the case because it must be on the on the contrary it's a very good explanation of why something's the case that it must be right and those were the two things that andrew said acuity right and consumed consistency and both of those are ruled out so let me explain to uh cameron right because cameron says he still doesn't get what i'm trying to say so what i'm trying to say is is if the initial state is so special right it's different from other states then the initial state must have some special property which makes it different right from other things so andrew you're cutting out a little bit graham is still with me he's he's he's on the screen here so we may just have to wait until andrew gets back here yeah i think he's yeah let's just wait a second yeah yeah yeah so that's fine okay he's he's actually right you know what i actually planned to do andrew okay you're back dude hold it in your mind hold it in your mind i want to do this because you you asked me to prepare for just a little break and i figure it might be actually nice to take a little break and do something a little bit on the on the lighter side so here's a question i want to pose it to both of you guys and you can answer it take it take as much time you need all right so here's uh here's the first question i think we'll probably just do one if you could have any superhero power what power would you have and why start with graham okay so i have to choose from existing superheroes right as in any superhero power yeah but but presumably there's some superhero who's said to have have the power in question yeah that's that's really difficult um because you're allowed to have just one um so what i'm thinking is i would like to have a superpower that enabled me to do the most good i'm not sure what what that power is going to be but um i mean see i mean there is this thing about the superheroes that they have these amazing powers and they they typically kind of use them in rather random ways but if you could kind of systematically use your power to you know use your superpower to do the maximum amount of good that seems to me so that hasn't exactly answered the question but that's because i because i'm not sure what that power would be i mean it might be just amazing kind of physical capacity so you can just look you know like superman you can do all this stuff really quickly so you know you could sort of go around and um build stuff for community the way it actually comes the way it actually manifests might be in different ways yeah to get that end yeah that's an interesting response it's a very obvious response of you poppy so here uh so andrew give me your answer to this question if you could have any superhero power what would you want well um it will be to be able to share um to be able to know the truth and to share with everybody i think that'll be great yeah um i mean we don't have to know we don't have the superpower in order to know the truth i think we can know the truth based on reasons and evidence uh but it'll be good right to to know what is will be really good right for other people i mean graham says it would be good to do good for everyone right so but what is the good um yeah i would want to um know what is the best right that can be done for everyone and to be able to have the power to do it right so um i think that's a good superpower to have okay all right let's get back to the topic so andrew pick up where you left off i'm sure you i'm sure that's what you've been itching to talk about the whole time we've been doing this little side all right go ahead yeah that's right uh so i'm trying to explain that um in order for the initial state to be special the initial states must have some special properties right and that's then that special property will have to do the work of explaining why is it the case that only the initial state can exist can begin to exist without a course whereas other things that come later cannot right however the special property can do the work that is required only when it exists right and the property would only exist when the initiative state has existed right because the special property is a property of the initial state right so this property can do the work only when the initial state has already existed in which case it is not the case that the initial state it is not the case that the special property explain why is it that the initial state ex began to exist rather than other things right because the special property requires the initial state to begin to exist already right so what this means is that there can be no special property which can do the special which can do the required work right you'll be super fluids for explaining why is it the case that only the initial state but not other things say other universes other possible universe from beginning to exist on course right and therefore um yeah that cannot be any such property and therefore there cannot be any such distinction between the initial states and other possible things or other things that come later um and and and that that uh and and that's the first point the second point to say is that graham says that his view entails that my reasons are wrong well of course my reasons until that his view is wrong right so which way the entailment holds which one should we hold to depends on the grounds of the reason right so the grounds for my reason is based on deduction right i have deduced uh i the the my reasons are based on what it means right to begin to exist on course as i said early on what begins like this on course means is that there is no cause that makes it the case that only these rather than other things begin to exist uh and and then it also means that there will be no difference right between this thing and other things where beginning to exist is concerned right this is what it means right so given that so given that this is analytically true given that so by deduction we can know that these reasons are true which entail that his view is false right so okay so what was the first thing again andrew you just said two things what was the first one because i want to just remind me quickly yeah so the first thing i said was that in order for the individual states uh okay right so so the special property is necessity right obtaining of necessity existing of necessity necessity excludes alternatives there's no problem right so where this comes from is thinking about modality and what's the best theory of metaphysical necessity i think that the best theory of necessity is one which says that every world shares some history with the actual world diverges only because chances play out differently i think that the reason for believing that is the same reason as there is for believing any other theory that it's the kind of simplest theory that's adequate to all of the things that we really want to explain so it turns out that the initial state precisely has the special property that you're looking for one that excludes absolutely everything else right because if things must be this way they can't be any other way so that's the first reply okay my reply to your first reply is that you are claiming that there is a property of necessary uh necessary existence right uh that makes uh the interesting different from others my reply to your reason is that there cannot be any such property because any such property will be required to do the work of differentiating the initial state from other things but it cannot do the work because it can only do the work when it is already existing right which makes the property superfluous well it comes first so of course it does the work what what comes across it's it's it's the initial state is the first state and necessarily so right but all the other states to distinct from it because they're caused as a result of indeterministic causation from the first state and so they're all contingent and it's necessary right the distinction between the initial state and the non-initial states is marked in two ways first in terms of sort of causal priority and second in terms of necessity on my view there are two distinctions that distinguish the initial state from all the outputs okay so um so you're saying that um first right there there is uh this the initials so you can remember me what's the first thing you say again i lost it so what i said i'm trying to remember that what i said was that it's that it's being necessary right it's being initial and it's being necessary the two distinctive features of the initial state it's it's not just that the initial state's initial but it's necessarily initial right yeah but that doesn't answer my question right because it says sure because it exploits everything else it excludes everything else well it right if it's necessary that p then any alternatives to p anything that entails not p q r s and t if they entail not pay all ruled out yeah it almost sounds to me like andrew you're you're wanting to basically compare hit the initial state with some other state that isn't necessary and then so you're kind of stripping it from it being necessary and graham's saying no it's the initial state and that state is necessary and that's why it's different from everything else so in one sense like if if you took that property away like if you're if graham's view of modality was false and the initial state wasn't necessary then i think maybe you'd have a point but with his view that's there and you've got to take that into account i understand that that is his view and i'm trying to explain why his view doesn't work because his view required the initial state to have some special property but that special property cannot do the work that it requires because as i said that special property can only do the work when the initial state is already existing right no i don't understand that at all right there could not be any alternative there must be this initial state there couldn't be anything else that's one of the problems because it's necessary right so you don't have to worry right there is no alternative on my view there couldn't be i know that on your view there is no alternative right but what is the reason why there's no autonomy it's because the initial state must have found special property right but i already explained that no no special property can do the work i already explained earlier on okay so you think that when the other time any other point is that it's not the case that there's no alternative there's all other logical possibilities which i explained earlier on right it's logically possible that another universe began or those are logical possibilities right so it's not it's not logically necessary that our universe exists right i mean there's other logical possibilities so what differentiate between the logical possibilities why is it that this logical possibility exists actually is actualized in our universe whereas other logical possibilities are not actualized right um so you know you're insisting that oh ours is necessary right but as i said no in order for ours to be necessary and others other possibilities that are not necessary in order for that to be the case our there must be some special property right that of this particular possibility that makes it necessary whereas argus are not but as i said any property that can make a difference will only be had when this uh our universe has already existed when it has already begun to exist right and so what this means is that you know the property doesn't explain why always exist because it can only do the work explaining when ours is already existing which means that the property is superfluous um sorry the the the idea is that it's metaphysically necessary right uh we're interested what we're doing is ontology and metaphysics i'm not talking here as as you are about what alternative consistent stories you could tell i'm quite happy to grant that there are alternative consistent stories that you can tell but i'm saying that as a matter of metaphysical necessity um the the initial state is what it is right i on on your story on on your view which i'm not saying is a logically inconsistent view god it's contingent what that initial state is because god has a choice about which universe to make and god could have made any number of different initial states but that there's a logical consistency falls a long way short of metaphysical possibility right so i'm so just to be clear uh the the things that you that you want to say about um what you're calling logical possibility which i'm going to understand as as logical consistency or maybe more strongly something that people could reasonably believe is irrelevant to the point that i'm making because my theory is a metaphysical theory about what's metaphysical metaphysically possible and we all know already that in this dispute that we're going to draw a distinction between any kind of logical or toxistic possibility and necessity and metaphysical necessity because of the claims that many theists want to make about the metaphysical necessity of god's existence right um if you deny that a metaphysically necessary god exists you deny that it's possible as well right that's one of the lessons of the discussion of the modal ontological arguments simple forms of modal ontological argument right and is it there's exactly the same thing that's going on here you can't object to the opponent of the modal oncological argument because they think there is no god is committed to it's being impossible that there's a god that um you know you can consistently imagine uh that there's a god or something like that and so it's possible after all and the modal ontological argument succeeds you just can't go that way but at least i assume okay my response is that yeah so my response is that yeah i i understand that graham you are trying to offer a metaphysical theory but my objection is that i'm trying to explain what is it that your theory requires right as i said your theory requires the initial state have some special property and i already explained why is it that no no special property can do the work that is required and therefore your theory fails secondly you say that what about god right god is metaphysically necessary uh and my response is i already explained there is a reason why god is metaphysically necessary because god is beginningless right so without the beginning entails that god always exists and therefore exists necessarily so we have a reason for god which is not available to your postulation that the initial state begins to exist on course so the first part of that i mean maybe i should ask cameron to help me out i'm really not getting this there is a special property it's necessity all right well that is special so it sounds to me like another one like so here's what i wanted to say suppose you think something else is necessary like you think that it's necessary that two and two or four and i say give me the special property right what special property does it have right because it can't just be necessary right or um any example of necessity what i think is that when you say that something's necessary that's where unless you're deducing its necessity from something else that's where explanation comes to an end there's no explaining why things are necessary right there's no no i think that's wrong i think there is an explanation that in every case explaining so the meetings so let me jump in real quick andrew i'm going to clarify something that's going to help you out let me clarify something that's going to help you out so this was something that i was sort of suspecting was happening in the background here is that graham believes that once you get to something that's necessary then that's where ex explanation just stops like that's that's as far as you can once you get to a necessary proposition or necessary state of affairs or two plus two equals four once you get to something necessary explanation stops but andrew and i think i actually agree with andrew on this and this is that's that's aside from the point because this is a discussion between the two of you but it sounds to me like andrew's saying even when you have something that's necessary you can still maybe maybe not in all cases but in some cases you can still have an explanation of why that thing is necessary so this seems to be the disagreement at this point sure necessities like if you can infer the necessity of one thing from the necessity of another thing then um in a certain sense you've got an explanation of its necessity but you haven't got an explanation of why the things you inferred it from were necessary and so i think that ultimately explanations of necessity bound are going to ground out in things that have no explanation that that will be where you stop with your expert yes and and where you stop it can be by definition right uh so for example um the definition of something that has no beginning will be that it always exists that is the that's what it implies and therefore something that always exists implies that it exists necessarily right so the it has you can stop the definition right that's how it stops for god that actually doesn't follow though right just because some things always existed doesn't mean and it is extinct but it exists that it exists of necessity those are two different claims because one of them is just a claim that in this world if we trace it trace it back at every i don't know quite what you want to call them because you weren't happy with points but everywhere it exists right but that doesn't tell you that in other words everywhere it exists you can't infer from always to necessarily that's just invalid well by by necessary i mean that no in this world it cannot fail to exist right so in this world it has no beginning mean that no it has always existed so it doesn't this this means that it doesn't fail to exist and so if something has no beginning and it's unsustained right then it has um you know it has always been this way right in this actual world so this is based on what you mean because it cannot fail right that's mixing up two things right the question the point about modality um if we go with the possible wilds framework is that um we're talking about other worlds as soon as we make claims about what's possible and what's necessary if something's possible to say it's possible that p is just to say there's at least one world in which p to say it's necessary that p is to say in all worlds that um p now that something exists at every point in this world right is not going to entail that it exists in at every point in every other world and i've said that what you get at the beginning exists in every world right um but it could be that there are that trace a thread from the beginning in our world all the way through to the end so they always exist but in some other world something happens at a certain point and the thing gets terminated right and so the inference from always to necessarily is it's easy to make counter models so it's it's not a valid move yeah so i'm trying to explain what i'm trying to explain is that now i'm not claiming that god is logically necessary right i'm saying that it is necessary in the sense that it cannot in the initially beginningless change the state right it cannot fail to exist right because it's beginningless right he has no beginning so it can it cannot fail to exist in that state right uh as the initiator of everything else that comes later now once everything else began to exist it is possible that god ceased to exist well it is possible afterwards right so i'm not denying that no but that a beginning or state could be as opposed to necessary right and he and then the prop and then in your words the problem necessity not the beginninglessness now as i said on your own right if it has no beginning you know then uh you know that it's not contingent on anything because it has is it's just if it's not beginning and hasn't is not being sustained by anything else then it's just the way it is right that because that is there's it's not dependent on it on anything to make it the way that it is and therefore it's not contingent in that sense it's nothing that says that it must exist that in every other possible world every other possible world starts out you have to make that inference from necessity right that's the problem that you need to work well i'm not claiming the second thing right i'm not claiming that god exists in all logical possible i'm not i'm not getting that what i what i'm claiming is that's the initial state yeah so i'm not claiming what you you use say i i claim yeah so i need to clarify this let me just remind you guys we're uh we're excuse me i think we're actually at the two hour mark do you guys have time to go maybe another 10 15 minutes or are we needing to close it out i know it's been a while okay uh and one last thing that i'm gonna remind you of is that when you're talking when you're both talking at the same time we can only hear one of you and i can't choose who gets heard so if we can try to wait until the other one's done that's going to be better for everybody all right so uh who whose turn was it i i forget i think it's graham stone oh okay well thank you so much how about how about this because we've been talking about this for a while we haven't talked if we have another 10 15 minutes we haven't talked about your claim andrew that the initials or the uh the first cause has got to have libertarian freedom that might be a premise worth discussing at some point as well so let's let's say like if we could accept you know suppose that graham was one of these people that accepted a causal the causal principle that you need or that you say that you need for your argument to work and so let's let's move to that that stage of your argument and just talk about that a little bit just to switch things up a little bit so andrew remind me what that premise is is there just one premise that's crucial there or there uh yeah there are a few actually yeah um so um yeah so from the course of principle right uh which shows that everything that begins to exist has a cause right from that course of principle uh which is based on those three reasons which are offered um one can uh and the reason why i offered those is because as i said right that's our universe um okay so i've given those reasons so so based on the causal principle what what this implies is that the first course uh has um no beginning right and so and also and so this implies that the first course uh it's not an event because an event is something that has a beginning right so uh the first course is not a change right so what it means is that the first course must be initially changeless right uh and so an initially changeless first course for the initially changed first course uh to change and bring about an event that initially changed the first course must have uh firstly the capacity to bring about an event in a way that is not higher that is not determined by prior events right and it must also have the capacity to prevent itself from changing initially right so that um no it is not achieved so so that you know it is uh it can be initially changeless and beginningless right uh and this these two properties implies that the first cause has limited freedom right you must be able to freely bring about the first event and anything that has libertarian freedom is a personal agent and therefore the first course is a personal agent so let's start there graham where do you disagree on that assume like let's assume this stuff that's necessary to get to this premise yeah so so that's sort of tricky because i think that if you are going to accept that what begins whatever begins has a cause you'd go for infinite regress and so we would have to go back and talk about that um now that that seems to me not the way that that's not true actually i mean if everything begins to exist has a cause then there's no the the series can stop with a beginningless first course right there's no infinite regress you can stop before beginning this first course right but on the beginning will be exceptional from my point of view if you're if you're not a believer right at this point it seems to me my way more plausible that what you're going to think is okay whatever begins has what whatever begins to exist has a cause then we've got we will go with infinite regress and so there's a whole argument that we haven't had about infinite regress that would now become relevant but let's put that to one side okay so um think about the the initial state and think about the um the the um i don't know like there's the universe and let's think about the universe as expanding right does the at t equals zero does the event of the universe is expanding that's happening at t equals zero have a beginning um is an instant right if it has a beginning then at t equals zero we've got to somehow either divide it into the beginning the middle and the end or something like that and that just seems false right the thing the event that's happening the instantaneous event that's happening at t equals zero doesn't have a beginning right so i really didn't follow that part of the argument maybe you want to say it again okay sure so uh i already explained earlier on right what i mean by the beginning is something that is finite in the earlier than direction right so it doesn't depend on the beginning point right there's no need for a beginning point on my definition of beginning right so um even if there's no beginning point as long as the universe is finite in the earlier direction it will have a beginning on my view right and you'll be susceptible to the causal principle right because if that thing which is finite in extension has a beginning then as i said you know there can be no properties that different that can do the work of differentiating that right from other metaphysically possible states of affairs right from beginning to exist on course right so that is my argument so i'm still not getting it right so i'm i'm imagining that there's an initial state of the universe at t equals zero right and i'm thinking that there's an event the event that's happening just at t equals zero and you're saying that event has to have a beginning right and i can't see that that event just occurs wholly at t equals zero i don't see where the beginning of that event the distinction between the beginning of the event and the entire event i don't see how that there's any such distinction to be made sorry um so can you can you go back and repeat again the argument not the not the explanation but the actual argument itself that was supposed to get you to the conclusion that um the initial cause is free and let me stop you at the point where you said the thing that i'm trying to respond to okay yeah i'm sorry i at least want to say earlier because my network was disrupted so uh but let me just repeat what i said earlier on and you can stop me uh wherever you think it's necessary okay so um so my my reason for why the first course is personal is because um the the first course a beginningless first course cannot be an event because an event is something that has a beginning right and so the first the first course cannot be an event the first course cannot be a change right because uh a change has beginning and so the first course must be initially changeless and so for the initially changeless first course to cost an event right it has to have the property to initiate the events by itself right it cannot be cannot be dependent on the previous course to do that and secondly it must also have the property of being able to prevent itself from changing initially right because otherwise it won't be initially changeless and meaningless and therefore having these two properties imply that the first cause is is a free hesitant freedom it's a free agent right okay so i don't get the distinction here between objects and events so on my view events and objects are alike in their status with respect to beginnings right objects have beginnings of their existence events have beginnings of their obtaining assuming in both cases that they're not instantaneous so maybe we should just forget about instantaneous um events and objects right we at the beginning we remember we thought well there's this different causal series here there's a series of events there's a series of objects i don't see what the ground of the distinction is that would make you say that somehow or other events have to have beginnings but objects don't it seems to me it seems to me that we've got two categories here and with respect to beginnings they're kind of equally placed whether they have to have them or not yeah so um i think to answer a question we have to be clear about the what do we mean by events right what's the definition of events right so as i said earlier on on my view an event is equivalent to a change right so what is a change a change is um involves the gaining or the losing of properties right something or some or part of the thing gaining or losing a property and so um at the state or gain a property or lose a property though that state right will be a a beginning right as something gained a property it began it began to have a new property so and therefore on this definition events had beginning right uh whereas an object does not necessarily have beginnings because that could be say initially changeless object right an object that is initially changeless will not have a beginning it has yeah so so that's the distinction so can there be an event where a thing just maintains its properties so it doesn't gain properties and it doesn't lose properties but it just dies well well uh if what you have described is what i would call changeless right it even maintains right so it is changeless so but sorry but is it an event right so is there an event that's occurring i would say that it's a state right what is it say say it's not an event it's a state it's a changeless state it's not an event okay so states i mean in the in the uh the kind of distinctions that we we started with we didn't mention states we just talked about things and events so uh if let's add states into the ontology and think about um the the states of things does the persistence of the state of an object require a cause on your view the state of persistence um well uh so so can can it be that there's no explanation right so let's put it this way can it be that a thing um so we're thinking now i'm thinking now about things in time i'm thinking about things in the universe can it be that a thing maintains its properties over a period of time and there's no explanation of why it does so and secondly can it be that a thing maintains its properties over time and there's no cause for its maintaining its properties over time well um if something persists um through time right then it will have changing relations right with time right so um yeah so i i i don't think uh you know something can just persist changelessly through time right i think something can be changeless without time right um as in the initial state of god as i explained just now right uh but i don't think something can persist through time given that it will have changeless change changing relations right as time progressed um as to whether or something um yeah so it's quite common for people to distinguish between real change and cambridge change and for people to think that if that that merely persisting through time is just cambridge change it's not real change right and likewise changes in your location relative to the location of other things because they're moving right that's just a cambridge change it's not a real change so yeah i understand the distinction yeah so um between cambridge change and real change yeah so uh yeah but if you if you understand cambridge change as that's a change uh as a as something that that is different right at uh every temporal locations it is it has different properties for example right uh we've been related to other things um so you can if you can define change that way then uh cambridge change would be a real change so i think it depends on the definition of change actually no but but you can't you shouldn't do that because cambridge change was meant to be distinguished from real change obliterates the it's the distinction that we're trying to draw um i'm trying to say that no there are still some common properties right between cambrian cambridge change and none can reach change right i mean that's the reason why you know they are both called changes right so that there's some something there's still something in common even though there are differences right between these two but there's still something in common that we can classify them under change it depends on how you define change but i mean i think this is just definition a definition definitional disagreement but i don't think this is there's anything substantial do you think uh so you might think that for there to be that an event requires real change and that real change um means that there's got to be changes um well if you've got a single thing that there's got to be a change in its properties that's not just a change that's really happening elsewhere that's kind of relational with respect to it i'm not sure whether this is going to help or whether this is going to help with the the question about the premise in the argument for free will though i'm worried that um that we might need to say some more though about um states and events in order to assess that premise that's that's the kind of direction that this line of questioning is going in yeah so um so you said that we may need to say a bit more right so what i would say a bit more is that um there is um a gaining of properties right uh with something happening right so a series of events as i said right uh given my argument a series even the regress is not possible so the series of events must have a first course and so the first course must be in some way that is causally related right to the series of events it must be in some way bring a broad about right to the events so as the the event was so as there is a property that is being gained right that will be um that would be how the the the series uh is brought about right so that that is what i mean right when i say that the first course brought about the use of events there's a gain of uh property right and when that happens that there is a beginning as well okay so let's can we go back one more time to the argument from free will and the first premise in that argument so i'll just get you to repeat it again i'm sorry i haven't written it down oh maybe i should share the screen right so if if it helps right so that people can and graham can follow easier as well so um yeah whenever you've got it shared just let me know yeah i i uh so graham wants me to show the actually i have sent the slice to you graham before i mean the the the inference for personal first course right yes i don't okay i'm sorry yeah so let me let me share the screen right uh can you see it right in order to cross an event yeah from initially changing state the first course must have the capacity to be original event in a way that is undetermined by prior events and the capacity to prevent itself from changing otherwise the first course will not have been initially changes and existing beginners without the first the change to be the originator of the event in a way that is undetermined by prior events the capacity to prevent itself from changing okay to prevent itself from changing for otherwise the first cause would not have been initially changeless and existing beginninglessly without that event or change okay um okay so from an initial changeless state so there is actually mention about states in the argument so we've got events we've got states and we've got and we've got objects um like what i think at this point is i want to go back to thinking about the changelessness that you're appealing to and the characterization of that but my feeling is that we've probably gone long enough um and we should defer it for another time yeah um so yeah so you said you want to ask me about the initial changes state is that right uh yeah yeah so i i already explained uh so so we're thinking about um [Music] and initially when i was thinking about um causal reality we were thinking just about things and events but now it looks as though we want to have states in the picture as well and so i think you want to i mean we had a story where events were changes in the properties of things and states are going to be something like distributions of properties over things something like that so so we have things so so we have things we have their properties and we have changes in the properties of things and that's they're the kind of basic elements in the characterization of reality it seems kind of late in the day is what i'm thinking to start worrying about how states fit into this picture but it's important that in um that slide that you put up we have an introduction of states and we hadn't previously been talking about states we've been talking about things and we've been talking about events right so yeah sort of i think so i'm thinking that there's some more theory that we need but we don't have it yet and it's probably very late to try um to erect it speaking of late it is getting late where i am it's uh it's almost 10 30 at night and i is is way past my bedtime so i think it might be time it might be time to start drawing this to a close so why don't we do this since andrew went first we'll let him uh go first again and then graham can have the final word but just kind of give some summary thoughts maybe take three to five minutes share your thoughts of the discussion and then we'll close it out all right thanks so much cameron um yeah so i really enjoyed this discussion with graham um i'm grateful uh for this interaction and i'm also glad to discover that uh you know we have quite a number of agreements right uh so we agree you know that's a a loop right it's not the case right we agree that infinite regress is not the case right uh and so um um the only the and um considering the the the first course having free will now graham asked me to clarify what do i mean by states uh uh and my my clarification is that a state is something that can be beginningless right uh a state something that can be changed that state is something that can be initially changed right whereas an event is a change right so that that would be the the difference right um and and so uh i think the main so that's the clarification right so now i think the main point of this agreement is the causal principle right so we spend a lot of time debating about that right so at this time i just shared the screen i hope you all can see it right i share the screen where once again i lay out the premises of the modus tolerance arguments which i presented earlier on right and i think the key part of this agreement is that graham claims that the initial state is special uh you know is it is necessarily existing right and so he has some special property um but i i was trying to explain right that um there can be no such special property that can do the work because those properties of this space-time block and the properties of those other space-time blocks or other things which differentiate between them will be had by them only when they already existed right and so i'm trying to explain that you know um there can be no such special property which can do the the work that is necessary for his metaphysical theory right um so so that that is my key response right and so um so i think this is um the main part of this agreement right so uh um if if we if the first premise is true right and uh if the other if if the cost principle is true and the other premises are true then the conclusion follows necessarily right the exists a creator of the universe right because uh if the premises are true the deduction is valid then the conclusion must be true right and so um yeah so that that is where um yeah so uh i hope that's a great and i know we can have opportunities right to interact and discuss this uh in the future right um so that's all i'm gonna say for this time and once again i'll thank graham for this discussion thank you thanks andrew all right we'll turn to graham okay so um the last thing that andrew said um is in one way right and given his assumptions it follows that there's um first cause that's not part of the universe although i didn't make a fuss about this it's equally the case that from my assumptions it follows that there's a first cause that's part of the universe and the way that i see the discussion having gone uh we've made kind of no progress in uh changing the views that we had about the various premises in the arguments on on each side that would have led to the conclusion or sort of better made no progress in bringing about changes in the viewpoints that we had before we came to the discussion uh i thought that that's how things would turn out before we started and it seems to me that that's the case now that we've reached the end um as andrew said there's always more to discuss and there will be more to discuss on future occasions yeah i just wanted to say that i really enjoyed the dialogue and i've been watching the live chat the entire night and people have been very very engaged in the the discussion what you guys have talked about i think i think we have made some progress at least in the sense of like it seems that we did find some key areas of disagreement and i think that's progress you know it may not have led to a complete acceptance of any arguments complete arguments but i think it was helpful to see where the the key points of disagreements are and yeah i'm open to you know another round if you guys want to see another uh debate or discussion between andrew and graham just let me know in the comments but uh thanks both of you for coming on the show has been awesome thank you so much everyone and thanks so much for go ahead thank you all right let me talk to the audience real quick so if you if you enjoyed this dialogue and you want to see more stuff like it then first of all subscribe to the channel you can get a lot more videos like this we're putting out videos every week multiple videos a week even so subscribe to the channel if you want to support this channel and support the ministry then you can head over to patreon.com capturingchristianity link is in the description of the video just go to the link and check out all the different things that we have ways that you can support the ministry and also get things back in return so just head over to patreon.com capturing christianity support the ministry make sure that we continue doing what we're doing and thank you so much for tuning in we'll see you guys in the next episode of capturing christianity see you later [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Capturing Christianity

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Id: a8NrTv-Durc

Length: 148min 23sec (8903 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020